One of the principles of effective text editing is moving around very efficiently.

Following are some pointers which may help you do that.

h move one character left
j move one row down
k move one row up
l move one character right
w move to beginning of next word
b move to beginning of previous word
e move to end of word
W move to beginning of next word after a whitespace
B move to beginning of previous word before a whitespace
E move to end of word before a whitespace

All the above movements can be preceded by a count; e.g. 4j will move down 4 lines.

0 move to beginning of line
$ move to end of line
^ move to first non-blank char of the line
_ same as above, but can take a count to go to a different line
g_ move to last non-blank char of the line (can also take a count as above)
gg move to first line
G move to last line
nG move to n'th line of file (where n is a number)
H move to top of screen
M move to middle of screen
L move to bottom of screen
z. put the line with the cursor at the center
zt put the line with the cursor at the top
zb put the line with the cursor at the bottom of the screen
Ctrl-D move half-page down
Ctrl-U move half-page up
Ctrl-B page up
Ctrl-F page down
Ctrl-o jump to last cursor position
Ctrl-i jump to next cursor position
n next matching search pattern
N previous matching search pattern
* next word under cursor
# previous word under cursor
g* next matching search pattern under cursor
g# previous matching search pattern under cursor
% jump to matching bracket { } [ ] ( )

See :help {command} (for example, :help g_) for all of the above if you want more details.

Comments

Ctrl-i jump to previous cursor position
<C-i> (or <Tab>) goes to the next cursor position in the jump list, and does nothing unless you've already moved to an older position in the jump list using <C-o>. (Spiiph 12:37, October 5, 2009 (UTC))